Educators' Thoughts On Extra Days Vary

April 04, 2001|By The Virginian-Pilot

NORFOLK — The Virginia Beach plan to start classes before Labor Day rests on this simple premise: More school is better.

But is it?

In Virginia and beyond, the verdict from researchers and educators appears mixed. Some say adding time to the school year can improve student achievement; for others, it doesn't help much without deeper reforms.

"In theory, more days are better, but only if those days are wisely used," said Christopher T. Cross, president of the Council for Basic Education, a Washington group.

Cross served on a panel that found the 180-day school year is the "unacknowledged design flaw in American education." But the key, he said, is not "an extension of hours, but a deepening of learning."

Prince Edward County, 140 miles northwest of Norfolk, has the longest systemwide school year in Virginia, state officials say. School, which starts the Monday before Labor Day, runs 184 days, one fewer than Virginia Beach has proposed.

There, too, educators offered conflicting evaluations.

"It has been a tremendous benefit to have another week of school before students take the (Standards of Learning) tests," Superintendent Margaret V. Blackmon said.

"The purpose was to have more time for instruction. Some children take a little longer to learn certain things."

The extra days, Blackmon said, helped raise the county's SOL scores, though she can't say they were the main cause.

Carol C. Sheeler, a kindergarten teacher and co-president of the Prince Edward County Education Association, said the calendar "isn't popular among teachers here. It's just four extra days of doing the same thing. Four extra days that are the same as all the other days are not necessarily what will help children who need extra help."

Virginia Beach would go from 181 to 185 days. Educators say the extra time would include more testing of students to pinpoint weak spots and more time to cover the material tested on the SOLs.

Beach Superintendent Timothy R. Jenney has cited the high test scores at KIPP Academy, a Houston charter school that goes 225 days a year with an extended day.

KIPP's principal, Michael Feinberg, said time is "not the magic bullet. However, time sets students and teachers up for true success. . . .It's true in art, it's true in sports and it's true in education: If you want to get good at something, you have to spend a lot of time working at it."

It's not true at all, says Billee Bussard, executive director of Time to Learn, a Florida group against lengthening the school year. "There is a blind faith that more equals better," she said, "and there is no proof of that."

Many school systems in states such as Florida and Texas have found no test gains from longer years, she said. One Texas district saw higher test scores after shortening its calendar to about 165 days, said Bussard, who has lobbied the Beach School Board to reject Jenney's proposal.

Frontier Elementary School in Clearwater, Fla., has had a 210-day calendar, from August to July, for seven years. "Our student achievement results have gone up -- I won't tell you by leaps and bounds, but they have gone up continuously," said the principal, Marlyn Dennison.

That's also tied to other programs -- including a summer writers camp and a student project to create digital movies on computers, she said. "We don't want to just keep doing the same thing."

Two national reports underscore Dennison's message: More time must be accompanied by more innovation.

"Prisoners of Time," a report cited by Jenney, was written in 1994 by a commission including Cross. It called the 180-day year a relic hindering learning, but warned: "There is no point to adding more time to today's schools if it is used in the same way."